


Worrying

by Feather (lalaietha)



Category: The Losers
Genre: Multi
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2010-06-11
Updated: 2010-06-11
Packaged: 2017-10-10 01:34:21
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,070
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/93766
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/lalaietha/pseuds/Feather
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Caring what happens to others may or may not be a weakness. It definitely ups the anxiety quotient.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Worrying

There is no actual problem.

What there is, is an overzealous boarder-guard in need of either a bullet to the head, help removing the stick from his ass, or thousands of dollars worth of therapy. What there is, is four hours of overdue Clay, Pooch and Jensen with no word, because nobody wanted to pull their cells out and give the little power-tripping bastard the idea they were filming them.

What there is, is the aftermath of four hours of uncommunicated delay, or at least, the aftermath of the pressure of four hours of uncommunicated delay after it explodes in the end. Casualty-count includes the coffee-table (KIA), a shirt (KIA), a set of underwear (KIA), the wall beside the kitchen door (only wounded), and a number of small breakables scattered everywhere (not just KIA, but demolished entirely).

***

The fight starts like this: Cougar grabs her elbow as she's walking past and won't let go when she tries to jerk away. That's all it takes; that's all the excuse she needs to shift from irritable reflex to step-center-break the hold he has and hit him in the face. It starts like this, and doesn't go downhill, it cliff-dives and it's fucking perfect.

Clay fought like someone used to being bigger, stronger, who didn't realize the difference between when she's fighting to fight and actually fighting to kill; Cougar fights like someone who knows exactly what he's doing, exactly what _she's_ doing, and just hasn't done it for long enough to lose the edge. With forty pounds and three inches and neither of them trying to kill, that makes them something like even.

It's hard, and fast, and Aisha just goes with it. He wrenches her shoulder, just short of dislocation; she splits his lip, slams her heel down on his foot. It's her that dents the wall; when he blocks her from using her head, his hand ends up across her mouth and the bite is reflex, unintended, but it gets what she wants, and she's out and away. It's his body that breaks the coffee table, but he takes her down with him and if it costs him in pain (and it does) she's still not trying to kill him and that means he can get her pinned, eventually.

That just changes the game.

It's his shirt that rips, getting it over his head; it's the side strap on her underwear that snaps, getting it and her jeans down, off and kicked away. Her legs around his waist; her hand in his hair so she can pull him down and lick the blood from the lip she split. Her head falls back when he pushes in, _God,_ and it bares her throat; she digs her nails into the back of _his_ neck when his fingers curl around hers, thumb brushing down her throat as he moves. She kisses him, bites his lower lip and arches, _harder, fuck,_ and leaves marks on his back with her nails when she comes.

***

God has a sense of humour: that's when the phone rings. God's not a complete asshole: in the wreckage of the table, the phone fell not far from her head, so she can reach up and grab it, hit Talk and try to sound like she and Cougar _didn't_ just trash the apartment and then have sex in the wreckage, and like he's not still on her, head resting on her shoulder.

It's Pooch, which makes her chances better. His voice, the story, unwinds the last of the snarled knot under her breast-bone, paranoia defeated by reality, letting her breathe.

"So you're just over the border?" she asks, hand moving idly through Cougar's hair and (she thinks) her voice only a little bit hoarse.

"Yeah," he says, "and we're stopping for food or I'm resigning here and now, so give it another four hours, give or take for traffic and speed-traps." She doesn't think she's heard him sound that completely irritated since Miami. "If you have any human decency you'll have beer."

"Preference?" she asks, because that's fair enough.

"With alcohol in it," Pooch says, darkly, and then hangs up. Aisha hits Talk again and rests her arm on the floor.

"Four hours," she says, in case he couldn't hear. He kisses her shoulder, pushes himself up again to sit back - and kind of pointedly holds up his hand. The bite-mark isn't bleeding . . . but only just.

"I don't like things over my mouth," Aisha says; the longer she stays here, the more her body figures out what she just did to it, and the less it feels like moving or doing anything beyond starting to complain.

"I noticed," he replies, wryly, and she tries not to laugh. It's mostly relief, and she distracts herself by looking him over: most of the bruises, she thinks, will be covered by normal clothes, and Jensen probably won't ask, given they're all over her, too.

Cougar's still looking at her, measuring, and in the end he asks, "You okay?" which, as a question, is it's usual loaded self: what it actually means is _I might have known the right answer there, but I have no idea what went on in your head_; what it actually means is -

Well. It means the same as the thing that made this the right thing to do. She stares at the ceiling, and eventually says, "This caring-what-happens-to-people shit?" she says, lighter than it really deserves because it's light as she can make it. "Is hard."

Cougar gives her a look. He holds up his hand, with the marks of her teeth quite visible. He looks at it, looks at her, and looks back to it, saying, very clearly and without words, _Witness how you_ bit me _and didn't_ die.

This time, Aisha can't quite help starting to laugh, and laughing gets her a smile.

From her back, on the floor, she looks around the disaster area they made, knows he's doing the same, and she sighs. She gives his shoulder a push with one foot. "You, go get beer," she says, "and something to eat. I'll - " and she waves a hand at the mess. It's pouring rain outside, and cold, which makes it something like a fair trade.

"I'm serious," she says, though, as he gets on his feet, and she means about caring.

"I know," he tells her, giving her a hand to pull her up on hers.


End file.
